December 30, 2012

Sun Storm, an episode of the Curiosity series on Discovery TV premiered Sunday, December 30, 2012. The full episode should eventually be online, but it's worth catching it now if you can. The particle effects are nice, but no background info was available from producer Big Wave Productions.

In addition to introducing the science of the sun, the show discusses how "a massive solar super-storm could knock out the power grid for weeks or
even many months, destroying the technology that powers our civilization,
from communications to banking to our water supply." Food supplies could be effected quickly, and in a massive way too. It appears our definitions of security could use revamping, and our forces redeployed in part.

More than 10,000 magnetic super tornadoes -- each as large as a continent on Earth -- are now thought to storm across the sun's surface at any moment, according to an international team reporting in Nature. Below is a visualization of a solar super tornadoes, and We Are Sitting Ducks for Solar Flares by Dr. Michio Kaku.

December 9, 2012

...Apprentice training, color matching plug-in, Image Based Lighting, and 3D particles are part of the news of last few weeks (or so) of assorted After Effects tutorials, tips, and scripts & plug-ins new and old: